


The Space Race Is Over (And I'll Never Get to The Moon)

by Schistosity



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Study, Galaxy Garrison, Gen, Home, Team Bonding, also i don't know what the galaxy garrison is and at this point i'm too afraid to ask, and think about earth a lot, eventually......, i love space you guys, the team accidentally steal a $900m space probe, this fic is a cleverly disguised PSA to support NASA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-22 21:48:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11975718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schistosity/pseuds/Schistosity
Summary: The garrison trio stumble into trouble on an undercover mission after they uncover a surprising and eerily familiar piece of space junk. But with the harsh reminder of how far they are from home comes an opportunity to, in a small way, help it.A fic about kids who love space, miss home, and don't know correct museum etiquette.





	1. Pioneer

**Author's Note:**

> Got hit by mad space-feelings this week, so this happened. I love space a whole bunch and there is nothing on Earth you can do to convince me that these kids signed up for Space School and weren’t absolute fucking space nerds too. 
> 
> Title from that one very depressing Billy Bragg song.
> 
> Find me on tumblr @fizzityuck

When Pidge was 5, her father took her to a lecture at Columbia University. Her mother had been busy, and they hadn’t been able to get a babysitter. So naturally, Sam Holt took his daughter to his masters class in astrophysics.

She sat in the front row of the lecture hall by the door, sitting on her father’s bag so she could see over the large desk, her feet dangling loosely in the air. The student next to her was a woman with curly brown hair who helped Pidge keep her crayons on the desk while she coloured in a picture of Donald Duck (poorly).

But that only lasted a few minutes. After a while, Pidge’s eyes drifted from Donald’s to the notes the woman was taking. They were fine, sharp pen strokes that splashed massive strings of numbers and letters across the page. Pidge didn’t understand it, but she loved the shapes and the rapidness with which the girl translated Sam Holt’s words into printed form.

Then she began to listen.

He talked about space, and flight, and navigation, using big words like “algorithms” and “trajectory” that Pidge didn’t know. He spoke of a lot of things a 5-year-old couldn’t understand, but he spoke with a passion she most definitely could.

He drew big, extravagant diagrams on the chalkboard of planets and moons and threw up huge projections of equations and rocket ships. He explained new methods being developed for spaceflight; ways to half the time it would take to get probes to Kerberos.

Pidge knew that word, that was her dad’s work, his word. Kerberos. She sat starry-eyed, picturing the world he described.

She was going to go there one day. Even at 5, she knew. She was going to go to space.

When Pidge was 10 she found out her father was giving a lecture at Caltech on the Kerberos Program’s propulsion research.

‘It isn’t going to be like the high school classes you’re taking,’ her dad said. ‘These students are all potential astronauts.’

She had gone anyway.

This time she sat in middle of the lecture hall, though she still needed to roll up her sweater and sit on it to be high enough at the desk. She brought her laptop and took notes the whole time her father spoke, latching onto every word. She only felt a little awkward when the older students sat down around her.

Space, the stars, the ships that sailed through them - That was what she was here for, to picture them, to make the calculations in her head. One day, she thought, she’d be sitting here as an actual student. The thought made her ecstatic.

‘Did you get that last bit about reducing orbital decay?’ Near the end of the lecture, the man next to her spoke to her quietly. ‘I missed the equation.’

Pidge looked up at the man, he was tall and stocky, with dark hair. But his eyes were cheerful.

‘Uh, yeah.’ Pidge was a bit shocked to be spoken to, but she leaned over and expertly scribbled her father’s equation onto the man’s book. He smiled.

After the lecture, the man stopped her.

‘Thanks for before. I’m Shiro,’ said the man, offering his hand in what struck Pidge as a very adult gesture. She took it.

‘Katie,’ she said. ‘Katie Holt.’

Shiro grinned and snapped his fingers. ‘Makes sense.’ He picked up his bag and began to walk off. ‘I’ll probably be seeing you around then, Katie.’

Pidge was 14 when the Kerberos program was shut down, when her father, brother, and Shiro all disappeared. It enraged her. She should have been there with them, maybe she could have stopped whatever happened. She was supposed to be smart! She had looked over her father’s calculations with him, she knew they weren’t wrong. She knew Matt wasn’t wrong. She knew Shiro was too good a pilot. She was smart enough to know something was up.

The Garrison was going to be a hard entry, harder now that the reputation of Kerberos would be hanging over their heads like a bureaucratic thunderstorm. The tests were tough, she had to pass a physical, and everyone there would be at least 2 years older. But she had been sitting in on classes past her age for her whole life. This was no different. She was getting in there, getting up there.

She had to.

* * *

Pidge sat on a bench in a museum lobby on an alien planet, which was definitely not weird. She was fiddling with a loose piece of wiring she had brought from her space ship, which was also not weird.

God, her life was weird.

‘Pidge, are you listening?’ Pidge snapped to attention at the sound of Shiro’s voice. She caught his eye with full intention of lying, but lost the will to after seeing Keith’s glare from behind him.

‘Absolutely not, sorry, what are we doing?’

Shiro smiled patiently. ‘Well, you’re not doing anything- ‘

‘But you should still be paying attention,’ Keith muttered. Pidge didn’t mind. She had learned to filter out his sass very early on.

‘-You’re going to be staying here and keeping your head down while Allura, Keith and I head out on the mission.’ Shiro ignored Keith expertly.

The three of them - Allura, Shiro, and Keith, were undertaking a mission out of a bad spy movie. The team had been called by the natives of this planet, the Uorians, to protect one of their culture's most prized technological artifacts at a charity gala. It wasn’t a traditional Voltron mission, but it was just another hoop they were going to have to jump through in the name of diplomacy; the Uorians would be strong allies.

‘Alright, sounds good.’ Pidge could handle keeping her head down. She hopped off the bench and pocketed the wires.

‘Where are Lance and Hunk?’ Shiro asked. He was met with silence from Allura and Keith.

‘They’re off somewhere,’ Pidge swooped in with an explanation. ‘I saw them leave.’

‘Both of them?’ Allura sighed.

Lance wandering off wasn’t entirely surprising, or entirely unexpected, but Hunk seemed to have disappeared too, which was a definite cause for concern.

‘Go find them, Pidge, please,’ Allura smiled, exasperated. ‘We’re going to head out now and we need you to – as you say – hold down the fort.’

Pidge gave a quick thumbs-up to Allura’s use of Earth colloquialisms, a short salute to Shiro, and trotted off down the halls of the Uoria Museum.

The museum was an interesting place. For Pidge, it was one of the most interesting she’d been in her entire time in space. It reminded her of the likes of the Smithsonian or the Johnson Space Centre.

It was a museum of galactic technology, so large it had spanned over a dozen huge buildings.

The Uorians were extremely revered engineers - priding themselves on their defining values of exploration and discovery. They had a long history of deep space exploration and celebrated their advances in the field. The Uoria Museum featured not only relics of their own space age, but relics from all over the galaxy - a collection of centuries worth of history. Even the artifact the others were protecting that night was a piece of their ground-breaking engineering.

As she searched for Lance and Hunk, Pidge passed exhibits of old satellites, the noses of alien space shuttles, and something that looked a lot like the moon lander (except it was bright red and had a face). She began to think about Earth’s own space program and how, really, every world must have had something similar at one point.

Even Altea, probably.

Weird.

It reminded her of the books she used to read with her dad about the Apollo astronauts, the likes of Armstrong and Aldrin. It had been a defining moment for mankind, her dad had said, a milestone of human discovery and exploration.

Pidge caught her reflection in the shiny hull of what looked like a satellite dish. She was dressed in alien clothes, with an alien weapon on her hip, looking at her human self in an alien mirror. It was a strange vignette.

‘Don’t even think about touching!’ A voice snapped, making Pidge jump. A six-armed orange alien security guard glared at her. Pidge took off again, laughing to herself.

If only mankind could see where we are now, she thought, talk about a milestone of human exploration. She figured if she ever went back to Earth they’d probably give her a medal or something.

Not if, she chided herself, when.

Pidge turned a corner into a larger, open part of the museum. It was circular, and about the size of a baseball diamond. Around the outside were dozens of exhibits, each displaying a varied assortment old spacecraft. She tore her eyes away and began to search for Hunk and Lance.

They weren’t hard to spot. They weren’t wearing paladin armour, because this was a stealth mission, but all Pidge had to do was look for their heads poking over the crowd. God, they were both so tall.

She spotted them by a exhibit on the west side of the hall and walked up to them.

‘What’s crackin’?’ she asked. Only Hunk turned to look at her, Lance was still looking intently ahead through the crowd.

Hunk grinned when he saw her. ‘Pidge, you’re not going to believe what we found.’

‘Wha-’ but Lance was already pointing, his action cutting Pidge’s query short. She followed his line of sight.

An alien woman was standing with her back to the trio. She was accompanied by a child, who she was clasping very firmly by the hand, holding her close against the ebb of the thick crowd. It took Pidge a moment to realise Lance wasn’t indicating the woman, but her kid.

The kid was short, with light blue skin and a bald head. All of that was pretty standard for an alien, especially on a multicultural planet. 

The out of place thing wasn’t the girl, it was what the girl was looking at.

A large panel made of some kind of golden metal was hanging in the display case the girl was peering into. It was odd looking in that it was a little too metallic when compared to the sleek, matte white tech the paladins had become used to on the Castle. But that wasn’t what made Pidge’s breath catch in her throat.

Unfamiliarity was unsettling, especially when you were steeped in it day after day. Pidge would often wonder if she’d ever come to think of Altean technology as familiar, and part of her wished she wouldn’t. Being among the alien day after day was like being adrift in a dark sea, or lost in a foreign city. No matter how many hours you put into attempting to understand your environment, it was an unshakeable truth that you didn’t belong there. Unfamiliarity was scary.

But in that moment, Pidge learned there was something more unsettling than the totally unfamiliar. It was finding the familiar amidst it all.

Emblazoned on the panel was the blue and red NASA logo.

Before she could do anything, Lance grabbed Pidge’s arm.

‘I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not from their ship,’ he said quietly, his eyebrows knitted together in concentration.

‘What do you mean?’ Pidge hissed, tugging herself out of his grip. ‘What else this far out here could have a goddamn NASA logo on it?’

Her mind was whirring. They were so far away… too far away from Earth for this to have ended up here accidentally. No way. It had to have come out here another way. A Galra way. Which meant a lead. It had to be.

But Lance’s blue eyes locked with hers. ‘You’re serious?’

‘What?’ She asked. ‘What else could it be, Lance!?’

‘I think I might have an idea.’

‘Well, what is it?’

‘Hold up, I just gotta relish in the fact I know something about space that you don’t.’

‘Lance,’ Hunk said warningly.

‘Okay, okay.’ He waved a hand dismissively. ‘It’s  _Revelation_.’

‘Wha- Yo- _Revelation_? You mean-’

Hunk nodded. ‘The missing probe.’

_Revelation_ was a name Pidge knew too well. It was the name of an ill-fated probe, the 5th and final of the Kerberos mission. A probe her father had helped build.

It was a deep space probe designed to image from outside of the solar system, it was the farthest distance a probe would have ever flown in human history. It was part of the Kerberos mission, launched so it could image the crew as they landed. 

And like her family, _Revelation_ had disappeared over a year ago.

Everyone thought _Revelation_ had been destroyed in whatever freak accident had befallen the Kerberos crew, but concern for the unmanned probe was minimal; a three-man disappearance was far more glamorous news.

If someone had asked Pidge 5 minutes ago what she thought happened to _Revelation_ , new knowledge would probably lead her to say it had most likely been destroyed by the Galra, collateral damage in the disaster that took her family.

Pidge hadn’t given a lot of thought to _Revelation_ in the past year, but that was very quickly changing.

‘It must have been caught up in the Galra’s warp travel,’ Hunk said.

‘Or maybe they took it,’ Lance posited.

‘Where’s the rest of it?’ Pidge asked.

Hunk looked thoughtful. ‘ _Revelation_ is what, like, 6 meters across? They couldn’t keep the whole thing in one exhibit.’

‘Yeah,’ Lance agreed. ‘They might be displaying it in pieces, or have the main body somewhere else.’

Pidge was breathless with shock. ‘If it disappeared with Kerberos I… If it survived… Then that might mean...’

‘It might have gathered information on the Galra ship that took them,’ Lance finished.

That was what probes did. They took pictures, gathered information, took samples, made records. Pidge knew _Revelation_ well enough to know it wasn’t just likely, but very probable that it would have taken readings of the Galra ship that took her family.

‘If it has readings… We might be able to find out exactly what ship took them,’ Pidge muttered. ‘Maybe even where they went.’

Shiro was here, Matt was off somewhere… But her dad? He was still an unknown.

‘Your dad isn’t going to be on the same ship he was taken on,’ Hunk said, almost reading her mind. Pidge visibly deflated.

‘But…’ he said, ‘It’s definitely a valuable starting point.’

‘So what do we do?’ Lance said. ‘That shit is on lock. No way the Uorians are going to let us dismantle their exhibits…’

Pidge set her mouth in a determined line. She was close to something. Maybe. Possibly. Hopefully.

But it was also something a little deeper than just strategic value. Looking at such a monumental achievement of human ingenuity locked inside a tiny, nondescript exhibit hit at something specific and fiery inside Pidge. She remembered sitting in on her dad’s classes as he explained in loving detail the schematics of the Kerberos probes, how ground-breaking they were. She remembered looking at the plans with him at night when she couldn’t sleep. She remembered watching it launch with an awe and wonder she could still feel now.

This wasn’t _Revelation_ ’s purpose, this wasn’t what they made it for. It wasn’t supposed to be sitting behind a glass case, it was supposed to be a tool for discovery and research.

She looked at the others and could tell from their expressions they were thinking something similar.

This probe belonged to them, and they were going to get it back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Upfront, this fic isn't going to be about Pidge finding her family :( Just 5 chapters of me crying about the beautiful, infinite cosmos :/


	2. Sojourner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Revelation is very loosely based on the Voyager 1 probe, so google that of you're wondering why I'm not even going to try describing it visually.

When Hunk was 6, he lay next to his mother in the grass on a warm night and looked at the stars. The ground was a little wet with the dew nights always provided, but neither of them had minded. They were looking up.

He remembered the way she held his hand and pointed his finger towards the sky, slowing tracing constellations. She told him about Orion, Pegasus, and Hydra, and all the stories that came with them. He remembered, on this night in particular, she had pointed out the Little Dipper.

‘Some people call it Ursa Minor,’ she said. ‘The little bear.’

‘I can’t see a bear,’ he said, a little sad.

‘That’s okay, sweetheart,’ his mom said. ‘I don’t see a bear either. I see a big saucepan.’

They had been lying there for almost an hour, staring up at the stars above the Garrett farm. Hunk liked the city, and he knew his mom did too, but he also knew now why she sometimes said he was jealous of her brother and his farm.

They never saw skies like this in the city. Never.

She pointed out more stars, drawing his attention to the big one at the end of the Dipper’s handle. It was not hard to see; it was big and bright– like it wanted to be seen.

‘That’s Polaris.’ She smiled when she said it. ‘We call it the pole star. If you’re clever, you can use it to find north.’

‘Stars can do that?’ Hunk asked, incredulous.

His mother leaned over and planted a kiss on his forehead. ‘Only if you know how to read them. Do you want me to teach you?’

She had begun to teach him, but he still had one more question

‘Have people ever seen it up close?’

‘No,’ his mom said. ‘It’s too far away.’

‘I’m gonna go,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m going to see it.’

‘I’d better teach you how to find it then, huh? So you don’t get lost.’ His mother had laughed and wrapped him up in a big hug.

As Hunk got older he found a passion for many things; engineering, science, cooking, and all possible combinations of the three. But astronomy was always there too. It was no surprise to anyone that he wanted to be an astronaut, least of all him.

He met Lance in high school. Both being on track for the Garrison created an instant magnetism. Lance was a hot-headed loud-mouth, and Hunk was his cool and sorta-collected straight-man. They made quite a team: Hunk with his smarts and passion, and Lance with his big dreams only distinguishable from madness through the confidence with which he spouted them.

He was 16 when the first manned mission to Kerberos was deemed a catastrophic failure, when the men were officially deemed MIA (for the time being). Lost in space. It was the first time Hunk felt scared about his future.

‘I’m going to do it anyway,’ Lance had said, from the Garrison’s balcony, overlooking the starry skies of the Arizona desert. Hunk liked it out here for that reason; lack of light pollution seemed to open the sky up into its true form – bright and vast.

‘This can’t be over. I’m going to finish what they started, see what they couldn’t.’

But Hunk was scared. He was smart, sure. Able? Yeah. But willing? He just didn’t know anymore. He had always loved the stars, always wanted to see them up close, but was he willing to die for that?

Hunk looked up, eyes instinctively finding Polaris. He always looked for it, so he wouldn’t feel lost.

He felt a little lost, though.

* * *

 

The three paladins walked as casually as they could over to the exhibit, which was not very casually.

Lance leaned up against the glass and started whistling.

‘Lance, when has whistling ever been casual?’ Hunk said.

‘Since now, my dude.’ Lance winked. ‘I’m making it casual.’

Hunk rolled his eyes and peered into the exhibit.

 _Revelation_ , or at least the panel of it, was remarkably strange to look at. It was so familiar, and that was what made it all the more alien. Hunk didn’t like it at all. He had become used to the sleek technology of the Alteans in his time here, so seeing golden, shining metal was just odd. What made it odder was that he knew where this thing had come from. The Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, where spacecraft were constructed, was only a couple hours from where he grew up.

And now they were both here. It was an odd feeling, to feel so close to home but be so far from it.

‘It looks like a panel from the main body,’ Pidge said. ‘Maybe the bottom?’

Hunk looked closer. Emblazoned on the panel alongside the NASA logo were a string of serial numbers and official government seals from a half-dozen countries. On top of being the farthest manned mission ever attempted, the Kerberos Program had been one of the first fully collaborative space projects, featuring input from the United States, Japan, China, and several European nations. It shouldn't have been as jarring as it was for Hunk to see words in languages he recognized.

The panel also had noticeably empty screw holes and broken seals along the edges.

‘I’d say the bottom,’ Hunk said. ‘And I’d also guess we were right about there being more of it somewhere else in the building.’

He pointed at the broken seals and holes. ‘Someone’s purposefully removed this panel from the larger probe.’

Lance clicked his tongue. ‘Alright, so it’s probably here. Next step is finding the rest of it.’

The three of them stood in uncomfortable silence.

‘We could ask?’ Hunk offered.

‘Ask what?’ Lance retorted. ‘“Hey, do you know where our probe is? We lost it. It’s 6 metres wide and bright gold.”’

Hunk turned to his right where the alien woman and her child had moved on to looking at the next exhibit.

‘Hi,’ he said, waving a little awkwardly to catch the woman’s attention. She looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

‘Sorry, I just… I was wondering if you’ve seen any exhibits that look similar to this one?’ He pointed at Revelation. There was an awkward moment of silence before the girl pushed around her mother’s legs and addressed Hunk.

‘There’s a big one in the back!’ She pointed out the direction. ‘A couple rooms over from here. You won’t miss it, it’s very big.’

Hunk heard Pidge mutter something to Lance behind him.

‘Thank you,’ Hunk said, and turned to leave.

‘It’s cool, right?’ The girl grinned.

‘Very cool,’ Hunk said with a smile.

‘I hope you enjoy it!’ said the girl as her mother gave a cordial nod and tugged her away.

Lance elbowed Hunk. ‘Let’s go.’

The three of them headed off in the direction of _Revelation_ , passing exhibit after exhibit of spacecrafts until they came to a large, rectangular room near the back of the building. On either side of the room were large display cases sunk into the walls. In each sat a large piece of spacecraft, whether it be a shuttle cockpit, a warp engine, and even what looked like a _Star Trek_ transporter.

And it was here that they found it, in the fourth case on the right. With its long, haphazardly placed metallic arms, glinting solar panels and maw-like satellite dish, _Revelation_ was starkly different from the sleek tech they had become accustomed to in their time in space. But its scrappy design was instantly familiar. 

All three of them stood there for a moment, taking it in.

‘It’s still, like, the fucking coolest.’ Lance said.

‘I hear that,’ Hunk agreed.

Pidge walked up the glass. ‘I’m going to need to get into its control panel, it’ll be on the underside, probably. But how are we going to get in there?

‘These things are like fine art to the Uolians,’ Hunk said, absently tapping the glass with his finger. ‘There’s no way they’d ever let us in there, let alone give us permission to take it apart.’

‘We’re leaving tomorrow…’Pidge mumbled. ‘We don’t have time to bargain.’

‘So, we need to find a way to get into it,’ Lance said. ‘Tonight.’

Hunk’s eyes went to the starry map used as backing in the _Revelation_ exhibit. All of the exhibits had decorative backing, and Hunk was smart enough to know, somewhere in his brain, that this wasn’t a map of Earth’s sky. But something about _Revelation_ , now a hair’s breadth away, made him look anyway.

His eyes did what they always did, they searched for the pole-star.

Of course, it wasn’t there, it never was anymore, and neither were any of the others: Sirius, Rigel, Betelgeuse. Hunk caught himself looking to the stars a lot, especially in the first few weeks out here. While he used to be embarrassed about it, he wasn’t anymore. Now he was just sad.

But something else caught his eye. In the top, right-hand corner of the backing was a slightly raised section. It was rectagular and protruded ever so slightly, only noticeable if you were looking straight at it.

‘Oh… Oh, guys,’ Hunk said. ‘Guys, I found a way in.’

It was an access door, big enough for them all to get through.

‘Not to be a stick in the mud,’ he said. ‘But I think we should tell one of the others what we’re doing, in case we get in trouble.’

‘Shiro?’ Pidge said. ‘I don’t know, he might not be too keen on jeopardizing a mission like this.’

‘Then call someone who would be,’ Lance said. When no one offered a name he rolled his eyes. ‘Keith! Call Keith.’

Hunk thought about it. Keith was a bit of a enigma at the best of time, and he couldn't say he had any solid guess on how Keith would react to the news of them finding an Earth probe, or their desire to dismantle it. However, it was better than calling Allura or Shiro, who would definitely say no. He called Keith.

‘Keith!’

‘...Hi?’ Keith's voice crackled on the other end of the line.

Hunk launched right in. ‘Okay, so, I’m gonna tell you about some stuff, and you’ve gotta promise to at least listen.’

‘Um… Alright?’

Hunk launched into the story of them finding _Revelation_. It was easy, actually, since Keith seemed to know a weird amount about the probe. Hunk explained how they thought it might have information about the ship that took Shiro and the Holts, and could maybe help Pidge track down her dad.

He didn’t want to wax poetic in front of Keith, but he found himself doing it anyway.

‘-And besides all that, this thing is like… It’s kind of ours? I don’t know… That’s dumb sounding, but there’s just something in me that wants to check it out, to see what happened to it, maybe recover the pictures it’s taken? I mean, that’s what it’s for right? Someone deserves to see what it’s found, and-’

‘No, yeah, I agree.’

Hunk was a little taken aback. ‘You do?’

‘Yeah,’ Keith said. ‘That probe is important, I understand how you feel.’

‘Oh… cool.’ Hunk didn’t really know what to say, he had expected more protest. ‘Okay, so, we’re going to try and find a way in tonight so we can open it up and remove its data storage. Don’t tell Allura, maybe? She’s not going to like this.’

‘Fair,’ Keith said. ‘I’ll keep it quiet. Just be careful with it, okay?’

‘Will do, K-dog!’

‘Don’t… don’t call me K-dog.’

And then he was gone.

‘Well, we got Keith’s blessing,’ Hunk reported back to Lance and Pidge. Lance pumped his fist in the air.

‘Yesss… I love being enabled.’

‘There’s a maintenance door back that way,’ Pidge said. ‘If we can get around behind the exhibits we can find somewhere to hide until night. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of guards around so it’ll be pretty easy to stay hidden.’

And that’s what they did. Just before closing time they silently slipped into the maintenance door and located the hall that opened onto the exhibits’ access doors. They walked for a little while before finding a small, out-of-the-way supply closet, and stuffed themselves inside.

Pidge and Lance passed time in deep conversation about benign topics: video games, movies, and even a little bit of politics.

Hunk’s thoughts turned to Earth too. _Revelation_ seemed to have sparked that feeling in all of them. He hadn’t heard Lance talk so openly about Earth stuff in a long time, but having a part of it here now seemed to have opened something up inside of them all.

It made Hunk miss it, he hadn’t really realised how much until now. He missed what it felt like to be there, looking up at the unknown. Now he was in the unknown, looking up for something familiar and not finding it.

Maybe this would change that feeling.

After a few hours had passed, they decided to coast was clear, and clambered as silently as possible out of the closet. Hunk turned on his communicator and called Keith.

‘How’s it going over there?’ He asked.

‘Pretty boring actually,’ Keith said, and Hunk could hear the muffled sound of a band in the background. ‘I’m not saying I want someone to rob the place, but if I have to have another conversation about cheese-making I’m actually going to die.’

 _Wow,_ Hunk thought, _turns out awkward fancy dinner talk is pretty much a universal constant._

He laughed. ‘Well, it’s pretty uneventful over here too, we’re just heading out now to get all up in _Revelation_.’

‘Crack open that booooy!’ Lance said.

‘That’s _definitely_ not the expression,’ Pidge said with a grin.

‘Be careful with it, by the way,’ Keith urged at Lance’s words. ‘I know I said that before but that thing is, like, super valuable.’

 ‘What do you think we’re gonna do, _mom_?’ Lance teased. ‘Play catch with it?’

‘That’s totally feasible.’ Keith responded. ‘You guys are the classic trio: Hunk is the looks, Pidge is the brains, you’re the wild card. I don’t pretend to know what goes on in your head.’

Hunk laughed but Lance looked confused. Hunk was going to have to work on Keith’s joke delivery.

It’s a joke, He mouthed. Lance shrugged.

‘Well, I know how valuable it is, so don’t worry.’ Lance turned on his heel and walked down the hall towards the back of the exhibit, Pidge following suit.

‘We’ll keep you updated,’ Hunk said. ‘But we’d better go.’

‘Alright, see you.’

He hung up, but the ensuing silence was immediately filled with the sound of running. Lance and Pidge were barrelling down the maintenance hall, wearing twin looks of shock.

‘Dude,’ Lance gasped. ‘It’s gone, they’re all gone.’

Before Hunk could ask any questions, Lance had him by the wrist and was dragging him along behind him. Pidge threw open the access door to the _Revelation_ exhibit, but it was open on… an empty room.

Hunk stumbled through the door and looked through the glass into the room beyond, and even through the dark he could see enough to make his blood run cold and his heart kick into overdrive.

All the exhibits were empty.

Now the strange quietness of the gala made sense; the thieves weren’t after the artefact at the gala at all. They were after everything else in the museum.

And _Revelation_ was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \\( ﾟoﾟ)/ Where could it be? Also, stay tuned for my next novel: Keith and Hunk are Very Good Friends: The Movie


	3. Voyager

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lance gits gud.

When Lance was 7, his parents took him to watch a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral.

It was out of their way - a couple hundred miles north from where they were visiting family in Miami. His dad had been against such a detour, but Lance had begged hard enough that on the third day of their trip, his mom and dad had packed up the minivan and they had driven up the hot Atlantic coast to the cape.

The rocket was not a manned one; the Mars projects were old news and the Artemis Program, which sent the first manned craft to Titan, had begun to decline long before Lance was old enough to really care about space. The only launches they were making now were supply ships or unmanned probes.

But those launches were enough to boil Lance’s blood in anticipation for what they were leading to.

The Kerberos Program. The next step in deep space exploration. The farthest manned spaceflight in history was coming.

Lance remembered the feeling of watching the rocket, a simple supply ship, launch skyward with a force and sound unlike anything he had ever seen. He stared in awe as the force of its blatant disregard for gravity shook the very ground beneath them, as if to say, _“I will not be held down.”_

He remembered how it felt to watch it recede into the clouds from his perch on his father’s shoulders. In that moment, for just a second, he felt a sadness. A sadness that he was down here, and not up there.

After that day, Lance decided to change that.

He had spent the next few days immersed in everything space related, having almost picked the Cape Canaveral brochure rack clean on his way home. He spent hours pouring over pamphlets on the history of the Space Centre and the Space Program, staring at pictures of the Apollo crews until his eyes hurt. He read everything from the visitors guide map to a small pamphlet about guest lectures in the month of August – everything was fascinating.

When he got home he ran into his grandmother’s arms on her seat on the porch. He babbled at her until the sun went down about the stars and how he was going to see them one day.

He remembered what she said later, over drinks with his parents; something he didn’t understand at the time.

‘Every generation has their space age,’ she said, ruffling his hair, ‘and theirs? Theirs will be magnificent.’

Lance was 16 when the Kerberos Program came to a sudden and shattering end. It was a bit ironic, all in all, having just become a cadet at the Garrison, to see the shining light he had been following his whole life snuffed out in an instant.

_So close._

He was old enough to know what this meant from an economic standpoint. It meant nothing good. It meant they would cut funding, their numbers, their resources. NASA would be lucky to get a new program off the ground in the next decade.

_So close._

The closer he got to his goal, the more it felt like it was being torn away from him.

_Yet so far._

Kerberos. The Garrison. Cargo pilot. It felt like the whole universe was holding him down now, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever be strong enough to break free.

* * *

 

‘Keith, uh, you need to get over here right now.’ Hunk was speaking into his communicator urgently. ‘No- I- Yes... I _know_ we should tell Allura and Shiro... But- Listen, they’re going to freak out if they find out we were planning on breaking into the museum.’

Lance grabbed the communicator from Hunk and brought it close to his mouth.

‘Keith, find a way to get out of there,’ he hissed. ‘We’re going to look for the perps.’

He could almost hear Keith’s retort, probably making fun of his use of perp (“What are you a cop?”) but by the time Keith could have said anything, Lance had already taken off down the maintenance hall. 

It was odd how territorial he was feeling. He would have been mad anyway, that they had been tricked so easily into thinking the heist was going off at the gala instead of the museum - where the highest number of valuable items were being kept. But he was angrier, for the sole reason that it was _Revelation_ they had taken.

Lance didn’t shy away from how much he missed home, he had stopped trying a while ago. Lance was aloof and funny, sure, but he wasn’t disingenuous, and he wasn’t one to hide his feelings. He missed home a lot, more and more the longer they were away. And while he knew what they were doing was important, and he felt good about it, he missed home. He missed the beach and the rain and his house. He missed his parents, his grandmother, and his siblings. 

 _Revelation_ was important. It might have information about Pidge’s dad, maybe, but that wasn’t the only reason Lance felt panic at the fact it was gone. It was a piece of Earth, a flimsy, tenuous connection, but a connection all the same.

It was theirs, it was a piece of home, and Lance wasn’t going to let it slip through his fingers like this.

He ran until he reached a set of doors, and was about to throw open a random one when he felt Pidge grab his arm.

‘Stop, Lance!’ she said. ‘We have to be smart.’

Hunk was not far behind. ‘Yeah,’ he said, coming up behind them, ‘ _Revelation_ is big, all the exhibits were big. They can’t have gone far with them.’

‘Alright,’ Lance said, ‘Where could they have taken it?’

Lance mentally drew up the image of _Revelation_. The main body of it was only about 3 metres across, but the dish was about 6. There was no way someone could drag something that heavy out of the building without some kind of vehicle, but there was a vehicle ban in the area as a safety precaution during the gala.

There were about 15 buildings in the museum complex, but it was likely the probe was nearby, due to its size. If they wanted a vehicle, it would have to come from very close-by, which meant…

‘They’ll be using a vehicle from the museum.’

Hunk gasped. ‘The hangar…! There’s a hangar with operational ships and stuff! Coran was talking about it earlier.’

‘Alright, so we go there!’

The three of them took off. It took them a while to find the hangar; a combination of darkness, panic, and just plain unfamiliarity meant they went in circles more than once.

After 10 minutes that felt more like 100, the trio came to a small, hatch-like door. It was slightly ajar, and Lance thought he could hear voices through on the other side. Hunk stopped them.

‘Before we rush in like idiots, what do we do? How do we explain the fact we were here if we get in trouble?’ Hunk nervously rattled off questions. ‘What will Allura say?’

‘These are the guys we came here to catch in the first place,’ Lance said. ‘If Allura asks, say we were just doing our job.’

Lance rushed in.

He ducked down behind a nearby crate, Pidge and Hunk close behind, and observed the hangar. It was full of boxes, crates, and old ships. It was very large, with a domed glass ceiling and wide doors on either side. The edges of the room were cluttered, but the middle appeared to have been cleared out. The only thing in the centre of the room was a small drop-ship with a large cargo door. About 6 thugs were loading the stolen exhibitions into the ship. They were tough looking dudes, about 7 feet tall with two pairs of massive, burly arms. Lance did not want to tussle with them.

‘Is that all of them?’ Pidge whispered.

As soon as she said it, a tall woman emerged from the ship and walked over to one of the thugs. She was tall, dressed in a sleek flight-suit. Her head was bald, and her skin was a pale blue. Lance recognized her with a jolt.

‘It’s that woman!’ Hunk hissed, recognizing her too. ‘The one from the museum, with the kid!’

‘Plot twist...’ Pidge whispered. ‘She must have been in there scouting out exhibitions or something.’

The woman strode over to the nearest thug. He nodded to her as she approached.

‘Is the transporter ready?’ She said. ‘The security systems won’t stay down forever.’

‘Almost,’ said the thug. ‘We have a few more adjustments to make, it’ll be a few more minutes.’

‘Fine. Make sure all of the goods are in the radius before you finish, we can’t leave anything behind.’

The thug nodded and shouted for a few of his goons to start working on something. Lance suddenly noticed what it was; a giant ring of green panels arranged around the hangar. In the middle of them was the ship the woman had come out of. The ship’s side door was open, revealing several pieces of machinery already stored inside - _Revelation_ among them.

‘What are those green things?’ Lance asked, though his eyes were trained on the probe.

‘Some kind of teleportation array?’ Hunk guessed. ‘They must be teleporting the ship off the museum grounds. It’s actually really smart, it means no one can track them on security footage, so-’

‘If they do that, we’ll never find them,’ Lance said.

‘Okay, so we stop them before they do,’ Pidge whispered. ‘We need to get into that ship. That’s where they’re holding the probe.’

‘Alright,’ Lance said. ‘I’ll sneak around and get inside. Pidge, she said the systems were down, so you stay here and try and reactivate the alarms; if we can trip them there’ll be nowhere for them to hide. Hunk…’

‘Yeah?’ Hunk looked nervous.

‘You distract them.’

‘What?!’ Hunk struggled to keep his voice down.

‘Sorry, someone has to do it.’ Lance gave his friend a quick pat on the shoulder. For reassurance.

Before Hunk could protest further, Lance and Pidge were already running. Lance ducked behind a rocket-looking craft, sticking low to the ground as he made his way towards the back of the room.

‘H-hey!’ He heard Hunk say, probably emerging from behind the crate. Lance heard the clicking of guns being cocked, but he didn’t stop to look as he skirted the outside of the room, staying close to cover.

‘Who are you?’ It was one of the thugs. ‘Identify yourself!’

‘H-hi, I’m uh, I’m just lost.’

‘I know you, you’re that kid from this afternoon.’ It was the woman this time, she sounded confused.  

Lance ran past a few crates, ducking his head low. He reached the back of the room quickly, Hunk’s nervous conversation fading into the back of his mind as he caught sight of the ship. The side door was wide open.

Lance silently moved into the ship, passing _Revelation_ and a half-dozen other probe-like things. He made his way to the front of the craft, quietly climbing into the pilot’s seat and peering down into the scene below.

‘-Where are your friends?’ The woman was asking.

‘Oh, uh… I was actually just looking for them?’ God Hunk was bad at this. The woman angled her gun at him.

‘I don’t care if you’re here to steal our prize, turn us in, or if you’re really just stupid,’ she said. ‘Nothing is going to stop us from getting rich off this junk.’

Out of nowhere, the alarms went off. The thieves stalled for a moment, and that was enough time for Pidge, from her vantage point in the shadows, to shoot her bayard out into the centre of the room. The green whip knocked the gun out of the woman’s hands.

Hunk ran for it, with Pidge in hot pursuit, followed by the angry cries of the thieves. The two of them sprinted for the ship and Lance readied the flight controls. The ship wasn’t too different from the ones he’d trained in on Earth, albeit in an alien language, so he figured he wouldn’t have too much trouble flying it.

Hunk and Pidge clambered in, and Lance threw the throttle forward. But as the ship rose, he felt it strain underneath him. It rumbled and slowed.

Lance looked out the window and his heart sank. The thugs were holding the ends of grappling lines, shot into the side of the ship. The worst part? They were managing to very easily hold the ship down.

‘MOVE LANCE!’ Pidge yelled.

‘I can’t!’ He pushed the throttle until the ship squealed. ‘We’re tied down!’

The ship screamed as Lance fought against the strain of the ropes, but they were lodged in tight. They had to cut them, had to get out… but it was impossible.

Why had they gotten themselves into this?

Suddenly, the door to the left of the hangar slammed open and a single figure came barrelling through the opening. The new entrant skid to a stop directly in front of the ship, black dress shoes screeching on the polished concrete floor. He was dressed in formal attire - a dinner jacket and tie - which would have looked nice, except that it was severely offset by the fact he was dual-wielding swords.

Lance had never been happier to see Keith in his life.

‘KEITH!’ He yelled, hoping he could hear him through the window. Keith turned his head and the two boys locked eyes. Lance nodded towards the teleportation array, and then back towards the ship’s tethers. Some kind of understanding passed between them and Keith immediately took off towards the ship.

Lance couldn’t see the action outside, but he could hear it. There were grunts, groans, shouts, and a few screams as Keith took out the thieves below. With every cry of pain Lance felt the hold on the ship slacken, and by the time Keith was finished, the ship was buzzing underneath Lance’s fingers, ready to go.

Keith ran up to the side door, Hunk grabbing his arm and hauling him into the ship. Keith ran up to the pilot’s chair.

‘Okay,’ Lance said as he arrived. ‘We changed our minds about calling Shiro and Allura, we should definitely call them.’

Keith rolled his eyes. ‘Alright, can we get out of _this_ shit first?’

‘Way ahead of you K-dog!’ Lance shot a mock salute at Keith, who looked distraught.

‘Oh, come on, you too?’

‘Guys!?’ It was Hunk. ‘We have a problem back here!’

The ship banked to the left sharply. Lance spun around and saw the cause of the disturbance; while the tethers holding the ship down had been cut, there was one they had missed - latched to _Revelation_. The other end was in the hands of the thugs down below, and they didn’t look like they’d be letting go.

Lance stalled the ship, sending it clunking to the ground. He couldn’t fly, not without leaving _Revelation_ behind.

‘Lance!’ Keith yelled. ‘Pull up! I have an idea.’

‘But the probe-’

‘Do it!’

Lance slammed the throttle forward and the ship lurched to life. The ropes pulled taught and he could feel _Revelation_ start to slide across the floor.

Before anyone could stop him, Keith drove both his swords into one of _Revelation_ ’s arms, the blades cutting through the metal like they were hot butter. Everyone in the ship screamed.

'WHAT THE FUCK, KEITH!' Lance yelled.

The arm sprang forward, the top layer of it seemed to have separated and swung down, slamming on top of the thugs below in a wide, devastating arc. They were sent flying across the hangar, letting the ropes holding _Revelation_ , and the ship, fall slack.

‘Extendable magnetometer,’ Keith said, meeting the trio’s incredulous stares with a blank one of his own.

‘How the _hell_ did you know it would do that?!’ Pidge cried in disbelief.

‘Space camp,’ Keith said, like it was an actual answer.

The shocking revelation that Keith went to space camp was going to have to wait, as a more important _Revelation_ was now free and the ship was untethered.

Lance felt the controls give slightly, and he knew now was his opportunity to escape.

‘We have to go now, Lance!’ Hunk shouted, but Lance was way ahead of him.

Over the cacophony of the alarms, the ship, and its screaming passengers, Lance heard the rumbling hum of the teleportation array charging up. He knew he couldn’t be in its radius when it activated or they were goners. He needed to get out of the hangar, but how? All of exits were blocked.

His eyes drifted to the ceiling, through the glass ceiling to the clear night sky, twinkling with stars.

_Nice._

Lance threw the throttle forward and the ship rocketed upwards. He barely registered the trio of protests behind him as the nose of the craft tilted vertically and ploughed through the ceiling of the hangar. Glass shattered around them, scattering down across the windows like rain.

He kept going, pushing the throttle forward until they had cleared the highest rooftops of the museum. Lance banked sharply to the left, flying the ship low over the rooftops as he shot out of the teleporter’s area of effect.

Keith was in the back, speaking into his communicator, probably to Shiro. Hunk was gripping Lance’s seatback for dear life, and Pidge had thrown herself across _Revelation_.

Lance was ecstatic.

It had been a long time since Lance had flown a ship. A proper ship, rather, not a giant, somewhat telepathic mechanical lion. The lions were both harder and easier to control than a normal ship; they understood what you wanted, but you needed to understand them too. Normal ships were simpler, but more complicated too.

Everything about it was skill. No amount of luck or telepathy could help you in the cockpit of the fighter jets and low-orbit crafts Lance had trained in. And while Lance wasn’t the best pilot in the Garrison - a title that clearly went to Keith (though he’d never admit it to his face) - he was still good. He was still a pilot.

Up here, he was reminded of why.

He remembered seeing the rockets take off from Cape Canaveral when he was younger. After the first time he had begged his parents to take him back every time they were in Florida. He had seen maybe a dozen launches in his life, and had marvelled at the way they’d shot off into the clouds. Now here he was, flying a spaceship into the starry sky, carrying valuable NASA technology. He had imagined himself doing this exact thing a hundred times, but never quite in these circumstances. The thought made him laugh, which probably made him look crazy.

 When had his life gotten so weird?

‘I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself!’ Hunk shouted. ‘But can we please land? I’m very, very uncomfortable!’

‘Alright buddy, don’t worry.’ Lance eased the speed and took his eyes away from the stars, looking down over the city below, trying to find a place to land. After a moment he locked onto the pavilion where the gala was being held, the entire thing lit up like a Christmas tree. That was a good enough place as any.

Lance pulled the ship into a landing, but as he did he mentally grabbed hold of the pure, uninhibited feeling of freedom he was experiencing. It was that original feeling that had led him to the Garrison, that had led him here, the inability to be held down.

For the first time in a long time, he felt like he was home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are all love Lance.


	4. Pathfinder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keith is teenage boy with thoughts and feelings, please support him.

Keith was 17 when he left the Garrison and, while his accidentally acquired cool guy persona would never let him admit it, it was one of the worst days of his life.

He remembered the shame and anger he felt when they looked him in the eye and told him to leave. Kicked out, dropped out, they didn’t care how he left, just that he was gone.

It burned him to his core. It made him want to scream. But his pride stopped him and he left silently. He waited until he was on the flight from Phoenix to Houston, buckled into seat 17A with the seat backs fully upright, cruising at 35,000 feet, to start crying.

It wasn’t every day that all your dreams were shattered right in front of you.

He spent a few weeks crashing on the couches of a couple of Shiro’s friends from Caltech. They were NASA employees, mostly, who had ended up in desk jobs at the JSC while Shiro had taken the route his military background had provided.

‘What are you going to do?’ One of them asked over breakfast one day, he was a wiry-looking aerospace engineer named Harvey. ‘You’re college age, right? Are you thinking about UH?’

Keith shrugged noncommittally, he hadn’t thought about UH. He hadn’t actually thought about anything. He was a prodigy geared for the Garrison pilot program, maybe he’d have gone to Caltech after graduating, like Shiro had, and then he’d have piloted a ship, like Shiro had. There was no possible future Keith had ever imagined for himself where he didn’t go to space, where he wasn’t a pilot.

For as long as he could remember, Keith had wanted to go to space. The desire to be up there, exploring the stars, was a blessed point of consistency in his wild and hectic life. No matter what happened to him over the years, he always knew where he was heading.

But not anymore.

On his second to last day in Texas, Keith went to the Johnson Space Centre and took the visitor’s tour. It was a Wednesday, so the tour group was pretty sparse, but the guide was still very eager. As they walked past the old shuttles and rockets she told them their stories in flourishing, spectacular fashion. Keith knew all of the stories, though; he had taken this tour probably a dozen times in his life.

He had grown up steeped in the culture of this place, and he refused to believe it could take so much from him.

The tour finished and they were all given posters, each emblazoned with a quote from a speech Keith was more than familiar with: JFK’s address to promote the Apollo program.

_“We chose to go to the moon! We chose to go to the moon in this decade, and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”_

And when he felt himself drawn back to the desert, when he got on the plane to Phoenix a day later, it was those words he kept in his mind. He was going to fix things, going to figure things out, all without the Garrison. _Because_ everyone told him he couldn’t, _because_ it was hard.

* * *

 

Being on the receiving end of Allura’s fury was almost worse than the experience of crashing a ship holding a 900-million-dollar space probe through the ceiling of a museum. Almost.

‘-Okay, we’ll admit we were being a little reckless, but-’

‘A _little_!?’ Allura snapped, cutting Hunk’s half-baked excuse in two. ‘You four jeopardized our entire alliance with the Uorians, and over what? A piece of old Earth technology?’

‘It’s not just that!’ Lance said. ‘Besides, we weren’t going to steal it, we were just going to download all of its internal data.’

It was hard to explain their reasoning to her. It was hard for Keith to even justify it to himself.

Sure, there was the strategic value of _Revelation_ possibly containing information about the whereabouts of Samuel Holt, but that wasn’t super high on Keith’s personal priority list. So why had he been so quick to care?

When he had received that first call from Hunk he had immediately agreed. Yeah, it was a good idea to get the probes data illegally. Because the mere thought of there being a NASA probe on an alien planet this far away was weird and wild and cool. It was the kind of thing Keith had always dreamt about when he was younger - to be an astronaut, representing Earth and exploring the farthest cosmos. Never had he expected to see something from Earth in a place like this in his lifetime, but here it was, breaking new ground with them in tow.

That was a hard sentiment to sell to Allura and Coran, who had both known this life as long as they’d been alive. Alteans had been space-travellers for generations before Allura’s time, so it wasn’t anything new, to see what they saw every day, not like how new it was to them.

But however hard it was to convince the Alteans, it was incredibly easy to convince the Uorians. They had even given them _Revelation_ as thanks for stopping the robbery and in the honour of “returning such a beautiful relic to its people”.

Now _Revelation_ was lying haphazardly in the middle of the training deck, pieces of it delicately put to the side, loosened panels encircling it like a halo.

The bad news was that the probe had been severely damaged even before the Uorians had found it and Keith had stabbed it. Its body was dented and concave on the left side, and there were dangerous bits of loose wiring on the underside. Pidge and Hunk enlisted Coran to help them make structural repairs, but they also insisted he help them insert new Altean pieces of technology into its systems.

On the third day of repairs, Keith sat with Pidge, Hunk, and Lance on the training floor. They had been chatting about normal, boring stuff. But the presence of _Revelation_ had eventually shifted their conversation to something more sombre.

‘You know what I miss? I miss the stars… the stars I recognize.’ Hunk stopped working on the probe. ‘Constellations and stuff. My mom taught me them.’

He ran a hand over the NASA insignia on _Revelation_ ’s body, finger tracing the pinprick white stars like he was connecting them. ‘The longer we’re out here the more I think I’ll forget them.’

‘I miss the sun,’ Pidge said. ‘I know… we see a lot of suns, but… I miss sunny days, our sunny days. It never feels the same out here.’

‘I miss the rain.’ Lance’s voice was quiet, but disarming. They all fell silent.

‘Do you think they miss us?’ Pidge said, finally.

‘Of course, they miss us,’ Lance said, with a forcefulness that betrayed the tears in his eyes.

‘You know what I miss?’ Keith felt the sudden, urgent need to divert the conversation to something lighter. ‘I miss Iverson.’

Apparently, that was all they needed to break the tension. Hunk snorted so loud he almost choked, and Pidge began to giggle uncontrollably.

‘God,’ Lance wheezed, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. ‘I fucking miss Iverson.’

‘Keith,’ Pidge called. ‘Could you do me a favour? Can you run to my room and pick up a bag of tools I left there?’

Keith nodded and stood up. As he left he turned Pidge’s question over in his head, heading down hall after hall until he reached his destination. Not Pidge’s room, but Shiro’s.

‘Woah, what’s up?’ Shiro asked as Keith opened his door.

‘Can I talk to you about something?’

A minute later they were standing on the bridge, watching Uoria fade into the distance. It was beautiful and, from this far away, it kind of looked like Earth.

‘Do you ever think they miss us?’ Keith said after a moment.

‘Who?’ Shiro asked. ‘The Uorians? I’m not quite sure the impression we made was enough to warrant “missing” us.’

‘No, I mean… back home.’ Keith clarified, though he got the feeling Shiro knew what he was talking about. ‘On Earth. Do you think they miss us?’

And then, more quietly, ‘Do they even know I’m gone?’

‘Does that matter to you?’ Shiro asked.

‘Does it matter to _you_? You’re alive! But no one had the chance to know that. The Garrison won’t have told your family you came back, I’d bet good money on that… no one is thinking of you.’

‘I don’t think this is about me, Keith,’ Shiro said. ‘Can you tell me what’s actually bothering you?’

And to Keith’s surprise, he actually did. ‘I’m out here like I always wanted to be. I’m exploring the universe, I’m piloting again - you weren’t there when I wasn’t piloting but trust me it sucked - I… I should be happy… But I’m not. I’m living my dream but, it doesn’t feel like it at all.’

Shiro let him keep going.

‘Lance and Pidge and Hunk and you... you all have reasons to want to go back. But me? I was already distant. I didn’t really have anyone, so why do I miss it so much?’

‘Because it’s home, Keith,’ Shiro said. ‘Frankly I’d be worried if you weren’t a little homesick.’

Keith thought about the question from before: What did he miss from Earth? He missed the desert and the views he’d get from it; the stars were always so clear there. He missed Houston, too, weirdly. He missed the food trucks he sometimes went to and he missed going to movies. He missed the blue skies and the southern heat.

‘Sometimes our dreams realise themselves in ways we didn’t expect, that's just the way life is,' Shiro said. ‘Maybe you’re not making the exact impact you wanted to, but why don’t you think about it this way: When we get back to Earth - when, not if - people are going to know about what you did, where you went, how you protected them. That’s a good dream to have, right? Seeing the change you’ve made?’

‘... Thank you,’ Keith mumbled.

‘No, thank you for coming to me about this,’ Shiro said.

Keith smiled. ‘No problem. But you’re not going to share your tragic astronaut origin story too?’

Shiro winked. ‘Nah, you’re going to have to wait till at least season 5 for that.’

‘Fuck off,’ Keith laughed. ‘What does that even mean? I’m leaving.’

When Keith returned to the training deck with the tools, Lance, Hunk, and Pidge were in the middle of a very different conversation that the one he’d left them on.

‘-Yeah, I said _Power Rangers_!’ Lance was saying. ‘Listen, as much as you don’t want to admit it, Pidge, Voltron is literally Megazord and that’s a fact.’

‘What are we talking about?’ Keith asked Hunk, sitting down on the floor near them.

‘What sci-fi shows are most comparable to our current situation,’ Hunk replied. ‘They’ve been arguing for a while.’

‘It’s even the same colours, Pidge, I don’t see how you- Ouch!’

Pidge had tossed the wrench at Lance, hitting his knee-cap far too hard to be healthy. ‘Don’t ruin Voltron for me, Lance!’

‘What about _Stargate_?’ Keith said, trying to quash a laugh. ‘Did you ever see that?’

 ‘What kind of question is that? “Have I seen _Stargate_?”.’ Lance grimaced, rubbing his knee. ‘You think I signed my ass up for space school and I haven’t seen _Stargate_.’

He grinned. ‘How come you know so much about nerd stuff, Keith? Are you, perhaps, a nerd?’

Keith knew he didn’t give off the visual vibe of being someone who had once watched 37 straight hours of Star Trek: The Next Generation on a couch in a shack (living in the desert alone got pretty boring sometimes), so he wasn’t super offended by Lance’s read of him.

All he said was, ‘I guess.’

‘Okay, guys, pause that for a sec. I think I have it,’ Pidge grunted as she tugged on the probe’s backing. Hunk held it steady. ‘Just one more… Ouch!’

The warped panel flew off in Pidge’s hands, revealing the interior wiring like the innards of some strange beast. All four of them crawled over to peer inside, and were met by a bright flash of light as sparks flew from the inside of the probe. All of them reeled backwards, like they had been hit by a bright camera flash.

‘What was that, sparking?’

‘Aw, those assholes were right. It is junk.’

There was a beat of silence, and then they were in hysterics.

And then there they were, four kids from Earth, sitting around an old NASA probe, laughing at themselves, their principal, and old sci-fi movies. It didn’t matter that they were on a 10,000-year-old spaceship, a billion miles from home. It was weirdly familiar, weirdly normal, and the closest to Earth any of them had felt in a long time. It was good.

A week later, _Revelation_ 2.0 was ready for unveiling.

They had set it up on the bridge, and Pidge made a big show of covering it with a bed-sheet and whipping it off in front of the 6 audience members, even though over half of them had helped her set it up.

The “new” _Revelation_ didn’t look too much unlike the old one. It was still made of that shiny golden metal, now buffed out and polished. All its broken panels had been replaced, and its dish had been cleaned and straightened. The biggest differences came in the way of additions. Mingled among the metallic golds and greys of the human technology were portions of matte-white Altean tech: new dishes and scanners on the top, some additional panels and sensors on the base. It was an amalgamation of human and altean engineering that, in Keith’s opinion, was a pretty good visual metaphor for their hectic lives of late.

‘It looks very... interesting.’ Keith could tell Allura still didn’t really understand why they had put so much effort into fixing it, but at least she was trying. ‘How did the data retrieval go?’

Pidge pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘I found all the stuff I needed about the Galra ship that attacked Kerberos. There wasn’t much, just a few encrypted communication records, but they’ll be easy enough to sift through.’

‘Do you feel like it will be worth the trouble it took to get it?’ Allura asked.

‘Probably not, but that wasn’t the only reason we wanted to check it out.’

Allura looked confused. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Well,’ Pidge said. ‘We’re going to send it out again…’

‘Wait, you’re letting it go?’ Allura said, incredulous. ‘After all this!?’

‘That’s what it’s for, Allura.’ Hunk explained. ‘You send probes out and they take pictures and send them back to you. It can go to places we - humans - can’t, but still lets us explore them.’

‘We didn’t think it was fair to just keep it around here, gathering dust.’ Pidge said, patting the hull softly. ‘That’s not what we built _Revelation_ for. It was designed to be the farthest deep-space probe from Earth, ever.’

‘It’s really succeeded in that, huh?’ Lance said. ‘Look how far this little dude has come.’

Pidge continued. ‘So, I outfitted it with Altean communication and processing equipment as well as new cameras and sensors. Now we can send it out again, let it keep doing its mission and send what it finds back to Earth.’

Coran was riveted, but Allura now looked at least a little intrigued. The clear passion in the way they all spoke seemed to have swayed her, at least a little bit, to their cause.

Shiro stepped in to explain further. ‘No one on Earth has ever seen this far out in the universe,’ he said. ‘Not in the detail _Revelation_ will allow now. I know Altea was pretty advanced, so this might not seem important, but in the grand scheme of things Earth is pretty new to space travel. This is going to be revolutionary.’

‘They’re going to lose their minds,’ Lance said.

‘It’s pretty limited, unfortunately,’ Hunk clarified. ‘So, we’re not going to be able to send a message with it… but I think this is enough. Imagine what this will do for people back home, scientifically speaking.’

‘NASA’s gonna get _so_ funded.’ Lance high-fived Pidge.

‘So,’ Pidge said finally, positing the question at Allura and Coran. ‘What do you think?’

‘There isn’t much I can say, really,’ Allura said. ‘I’m not from Earth, but… I do think it’s a nice sentiment.’

‘I think it’s wonderful!’ Coran said. ‘A novel idea!’

‘Really?’ Hunk said uncertainly.

‘Yes! It’s fascinating to see how much value humans seem to place on just the simple act of exploration. It’s quite charming, and a little scary!’ Coran laughed. ‘To think you undertake such grand goals with such underdeveloped technology, clearly knowing how difficult it is!’

‘We do it not because it’s easy,’ Keith said quietly. ‘But because it’s hard.’

He hadn’t thought he’d said it loud enough for anyone to hear, but a second later Hunk was laughing next to him. He looked up and met Lance’s eyes.

‘Nerd,’ he said. But he was grinning.

They dispersed, and preparations were started. Coran and Allura helped by compiling a short list of the places they thought might be the most interesting for _Revelation_ to photograph, while Keith helped Pidge and Hunk prep the probe for re-launch.

‘Okay, but we have to find a pretty place to drop it off,’ Keith heard Lance telling Allura from behind him. ‘My mom is going to see these pictures. I want them to be nice.’

Keith smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's apparently illegal for me to write a Voltron fic without mentioning Stargate Atlantis. Watch Stargate Atlantis.


	5. New Horizons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm like one of 5 people in this place who wants to write from Iverson's perspective. I guess we're all breaking ground in our own ways. 
> 
> Also apologies that this chapter is set in Texas.

At 8 in the morning, General Iverson sat at the bar of his Houston hotel and partook in his favourite pass-time of late; feeling very sorry for himself.

No one was really up except himself and some of the hotel’s staff, who had very kindly turned the bar’s television onto some news channel. The odd time meant nothing was really on, but he was too tired to complain, so he had been sitting there for an hour watching Rugby Sevens recaps with dead eyes.

He had almost figured out what rugby was when his secretary arrived.

Jacqueline North was a tall, willowy woman with long brown hair. She wore horn-rimmed glasses that made her look about 10 years older than she actually was, and always dressed in clothes that looked like what someone who had only seen movies about secretaries thought secretaries should look like.

‘Sir, what are you doing?’ She pushed her glasses up in an action that shouldn’t have been condescending, but was.

‘I’m welcoming myself to Texas.’

Jacqueline eyed the scene, the whiskey bottle, the television, the empty glasses. ‘I think there are better ways to do that.’

Iverson looked away from his drink and met eyes with Jacqueline. ‘Why are we doing this is, Jack? Why here?’

Jacqueline pulled up a stool and sat herself next to her boss. ‘The JSC has always been the heart of space exploration in this country, it makes sense.’

Iverson snorted. ‘What brochure are you reading _that_ off?’

‘This one.’ Jacqueline held up a brochure. It showed laughing astronauts in front of a bad green-screened mission control. It read, _“Johnson Space Centre: The Heart of Space Exploration!”._ Iverson immediately hated it.

‘Where’d you get that?’ He grumbled.

‘The Garrison faculty were invited on a tour of the centre yesterday. You were invited too.’ Jacqueline tucked the brochure into her purse. ‘You should have come, they had gift bags.’

‘I’ve seen enough of this place as is, thank you very much.’

‘I saw Peter Brown, too.’ Jacqueline pulled out her phone, checking a message before stowing it again in her blazer. ‘He wants to speak with you at some point.’

‘About _Revelation_?’

‘Most likely.’

Iverson groaned. ‘I don’t know why he cares.’

‘It went dead during the Kerberos mission, sir. It cost them a 900-million-dollar probe. That’s not insignificant.’

‘Well he can wait.’

The silence was filled by the dull voice of the newscaster, moving onto the morning’s headlines.

_‘-The memorial service for the 3 missing Garrison cadets will be held at the Johnson Space Centre later today. Members of the Galaxy Garrison and NASA are expected to speak at the service, and some speculation circulates on the possibility of new comments on the events of September 12th- ‘_

Iverson was suddenly very tired. He got up to leave.

‘Sir,’ Jacqueline put a firm hand on his shoulder. ‘You’re avoiding the subject.’

‘Oh yeah, and what would that be?’

‘The memorial service. Your speech. The fact you’re drinking bourbon at 8am on a Tuesday.’ Jacqueline counted off on her fingers. ‘I could go on.’

Iverson glared at her, but she was used to it by now.

‘I think we should go, sir. Come on.’

Jacqueline lead Iverson out of the bar, but she didn’t turn towards their hotel rooms, instead, she took him outside. 

Leaving the carpark and wandering down the road. Iverson looked out over the fields adjacent, where the lights of the Johnson Space Centre glowed softly against the black sky.

Iverson hated NASA. Their staff were pencil-pushing, frivolous nerds, in his professional opinion. But, of course, NASA wasn’t very fond of the Garrison either. Too military, they would say.

But the Galaxy Garrison was the best astronaut training program in the world, and if NASA knew anything, it was how to build damn fine ships, so working together was part of life.

But this was the first time Iverson had come to the JSC since Kerberos I.

The Kerberos Program: the biggest failure in the history of either organisation. Iverson remembered it like it was yesterday. Almost two years ago he had been standing in mission control, about a mile from where he stood now, watching the feed from Kerberos go dead.

NASA was an old organisation and had a hard history of failures. Challenger and Columbia were names sorrowfully spoken, carefully remembered, and consistently learned from. But Kerberos had been the first large-scale disaster in the history of the relatively young Galaxy Garrison, and it shook the entire organisation to its core. They had lost their best that day.

And then came 6 months ago, when three cadets had gone missing after a training accident in the desert.

Or at least that was the official story.

The first press conference had been a narrowly avoided disaster. It was easy enough to call the ship crash a training accident, but it was nearly impossible to justify the almost simultaneous disappearance of three cadets from the Garrison. They stuck to their guns, calling the events of that night “unrelated, isolated incidents”, coincidences and nothing more. It had worked. Sort of.

The subsequent press conferences and releases had been the same nonsense. As days stretched to weeks media attention grew less fervent – people mostly just waited, watching the invisible clock tick down until MIA became KIA. Presumed KIA, rather. It was the presumed part Iverson hated, the uncertainty, his people’s inability to know.

No one was going to believe the official story entirely, but it was easier to accept the cadets had died than try to believe something else. There wasn’t enough red tape in the world to keep people from asking questions, but there was enough to keep the truth hidden.

Iverson still wondered what the truth was.

The Garrison hadn’t labelled that night classified out of anything as petty as malice or an effort to save face. For the most part, it was because they just didn’t understand.

It was almost embarrassing how little they knew. There were so many questions, so many uncertainties. Everything was a mess, and to top it off Iverson was haunted by the constant question in the back of his mind.

Are they even dead?

Their ship, whatever it was, had disappeared past Pluto. Dropping off the radar meant one of two things: they had been destroyed, or God himself had plucked them from the sky. Iverson was a practical man, and leaned towards the former.

‘They were good kids, Jack, they really were, all of them.’ Iverson said, suddenly. ‘Lance, Hunk, Pidge- Katie, whatever… it feels wrong to bury them without knowing what happened. Good kids deserve a good send off, and this just doesn’t feel like closure.’

‘It’s all we can do,’ Jacqueline pulled a flask out of her purse and raised it in a slight toast. ‘To Hunk.’

‘To Lance.’

‘And Katie.’

The both drank, Iverson possibly too deeply, the contents burning his throat. He handed the flask back Jacqueline.

‘Keith was a good kid too,’ he mumbled, ‘and Takashi.’

Jacqueline turned away, uncomfortably silent.

It was only a matter of time until people found out about Keith. No one had really been looking for him after he left the Garrison, but kids like that didn’t stay unnoticed for long. But as much as Keith gave him anxiety, Shirogane was the reason why Iverson couldn’t face NASA. Shirogane was why Iverson was kept up at night. If he was alive, what did that mean for Kerberos? Had they failed that completely? The nerds at NASA would cry about misreading data and technological failures, which Iverson couldn’t care less about. But there was something the two organizations -  NASA with its flowery love for humanity, and the Garrison, with its code of honour - would both relate to: They had left men behind, and that was unbearable.

‘They should be up there today, being sent off,’ Iverson continued. ‘They were Garrison… they were good kids.’ He paused, thinking about his statement. ‘Okay, maybe not Kogane. But they deserve it all the same.’

Jacqueline picked up the flask again, swirling the contents. ‘That’s a problem we’ll have to tackle when the time comes, sir. As for right now, we’ll have to work with what we can do here, right now.’

She turned to face Iverson, and raised her drink. ‘To Keith Kogane.’

Iverson nodded. ‘To Takashi Shirogane.’

‘To all of them.’

* * *

 

‘-Commander Iverson.’

Iverson got to his feet and made his way to the podium accompanied by a quiet applause and the whirring of several dozen cameras. He hated those cameras; they sounded like bug wings, fluttering and wrong.

He straightened his suit, a humble black ensemble, and heard the clinking of his medals too loudly in the silence. Clearing his throat, he looked out into the crowd.

There weren’t that many people there. Some Garrison brass, the NASA administrator, a few dozen senators; all there for publicity. Then there were the families. They sat in the front two rows, and Iverson could barely meet their eyes.

He was about to lie to their faces.

He began to speak.

‘In my time at the Galaxy Garrison, hundreds of cadets have come through my doors, and have emerged as the flagbearers of our future. They are the most brave, tenacious, and brilliant among us – those who set their sights to the stars. They are the embodiment of exploration, curiosity, and courage, and in my time, no cadets have exemplified these values more- ‘

The door at the back of the room flew open.

The entire room went quiet, even the buzz of the press hitching for a second as Jacqueline came flying down the aisle. She was walking briskly, on the verge of running, stumbling every so often in her haste. She made a beeline for Iverson, and strode up the steps with purpose.

‘Sir, there’s an, uh… a situation.’

Iverson tilted the mic away from his face.

‘Can it wait until after the _very important_ memorial service?’

‘It’s Peter, sir, he has something you need to see.’

‘I’m sure Peter can wait.’

‘Sir.’ Jacqueline’s hand shot out, gripping Iverson’s arm with surprising force. ‘You need to see this. It’s urgent.’

It was a short run from the press conference room to mission control, made all the more speedy by Jacqueline’s urgency.

They burst through the doors into mission control and Iverson was immediately taken aback. He didn’t like NASA, but he knew their ways, and what he saw was as close to off the rails as he’d ever seen them here.

There were no current major projects in progress, yet the room looked like the old pictures of mission control during the moon landing. Dozens of people were milling around the desks, so many it looked like the room was overflowing. Papers were scattered everywhere, every computer was buzzing, and at least 7 very loud phone-calls were happening simultaneously.

Jacqueline lead Iverson to the back of the room where Peter Brown was standing over a young technician, chewing his lip nervously. When he saw Iverson approaching, he stood up straight, eyes wide with urgency.

‘General, you’re here.’

‘What’s this about, Dr. Brown? I was a little occupied.’

‘Forget the service, General, you’re going to want to see this.’ He nudged the technician in front of him. ‘This is Michelle Foster. Columbia grad, engineer, great gal. Michelle, show him.’

The technician was a young woman with curly brown hair and thick glasses. She rolled her eyes as Brown nudged her, but looked too freaked out to really retaliate. She opened a program on her computer and began typing.

‘About half an hour ago, the ISS intercepted an encrypted deep space transmission. They bounced it to JPL, but the deep space dudes there didn’t have the right tools for decryption, so they bounced it to us. I didn’t know what to do with it because the reading was weird; the computer recognized the source, but said it was from an inactive system.’

She clicked on a few files.

‘We were pretty low on staff so I called Peter, seeing as deep space technology is his line of work. I wanted to know if something had happened to one of the Voyagers, or maybe one of the early KP probes - y’know, _Diviner_ or something - that had fucked - oh, pardon me - fudged its signal... maybe temporarily erased it from the database.’

She spoke very fast, and Iverson was doing all he could to keep up.

‘Anyway, I sent him the initial transmission log and he told me it wasn’t from any of the probes we currently have in operation, so-’

‘So help me God, girl, if you say aliens I will-’

‘No, not aliens! Well, maybe, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves.’ She pulled up something on her monitor and gestured for Iverson to look. It was a list of all retired or inactive probes and rovers and their transmission codes.

Michelle pointed to one in particular: _Revelation_.

‘Now look.’ She dragged her finger from _Revelation_ ’s transmission code to the transmission code of the mystery source. They were the same.

‘It’s _Revelation_ ,’ she said, smiling.

Iverson felt his blood freeze. _Revelation_ , which had gone offline after the disappearance of Kerberos I… If it survived… what had it seen... Perhaps…

Michelle continued. ‘The thing that’s crazy is that, while the code is right, the distance from which this transmission originated is wack.’

‘It’s from outside of our galaxy,’ Peter said.

‘A transmission from that distance would take decades to reach Earth. But this is only, at the very most, 6 months old. Someone must have done something to the probe that altered the speed at which it sends data.’

‘How do you know it’s six months?’ The number was raw in Iverson’s head, and he feared the answer to his question.

Michelle and Peter locked eyes, before turning back to Iverson.

Michelle smiled. ‘General Iverson, sir, the _Revelation_ sent images, only a few at first but more are coming in now. That’s what it’s designed to do, but… You’re not going to believe what it’s seen.’

She leaned over and typed a few quick commands into the keyboard. Her monitor went dark. The screens on the wall at the front of the room went white, and threw 7 pictures up, 20 feet high, for everyone to see. Iverson gasped.

Peter’s hand was suddenly on his shoulder. ‘Well, Iverson,’ he said, smile audible. ‘You’re probably going to have to write a new speech for that service.’

A short while later, Iverson returned to the press room and walked back up to the podium. He was met with a curious and intense buzz of camera flashes and the reporters seemed to mill about in the back of the room with more fervour, like sharks smelling chum.

But Iverson didn’t mind too much. There’d be more press conferences after this, of course, and he’d be seeing the press again. But not at a memorial.

No more memorials.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘I have some… uh, important news…’

* * *

 

24 hours later, over a dozen pictures in total were released to the public from the “recently reactivated” _Revelation_ probe, but it was the first three in particular that caught the eye of everyone on Earth.

The first three images were very different from the others. Unlike the pictures of galaxies and planets that probes usually took, these ones had been taken with the _Revelation_ ’s internal security camera system. It had been installed for its stay at the Jet Propulsion Lab as insurance against potential sabotage, and hadn’t been removed due to price constraints.

In the event of something tampering with its CPU, it was designed to take three pictures in quick succession and send them to NASA. And that it had (apparently) done.

The first picture depicted four figures. The background was out of focus, but they seemed to be inside of a large, brightly lit room with high ceilings. The four figures filled the foreground, all leaning in as if looking down the barrel of the camera with expressions of confusion and curiosity.

The person in the middle was young, visibly younger than the others, with choppy brown hair and round, almost comically large glasses. There would be confusion, initially, as to who this person was; she looked so much like Matt, but of course she wasn’t him.

The boy on the right had long, dark hair that curled at his collar. He leaned into frame with a slight scowl on his face, though those who knew him would say he always looked like that, but the ease with which he seemed to fit in the group was not like him at all.

The boys on the left leaned in with twin expressions of intrigue. One of them was larger, with kind eyes and dark, shaggy hair tied through with a headband. The other was scrawnier and tall, with close-cropped hair and a mischievous glint to his eyes. Seeing them together was a familiar, and welcome sight, to those who knew them. If not for the extraordinary circumstances of its taking, this picture could be indistinguishable from the dozens of others the two boys had taken together.

Lance McClain, Katie Holt, Hunk Garrett, and Keith Kogane were alive.

The picture caused an uproar and the scramble to provide an explanation by the Garrison was an ordeal to behold - but in hindsight was actually pretty funny. The three missing cadets were enough to blow up the news cycle for a week, but the added presence of Keith Kogane, who hadn’t even been announced missing in the first place, was an entirely different fiasco.

The Garrison handle the ensuing press conferences about as well as expected.

The second picture in the set was extremely unflattering. There was an unusual light source in the picture, emanating from the middle foreground, sparks? Maybe a light? It produced an effect similar to a camera flash, harshly illuminating the cadets.

They were all reacting accordingly, squinting and screwing up their faces like they’d just been caught with a harsh flash at a party, rather than photographed by a deep space probe. It was a little blurry, and very unattractive, but it was an inexplicably happy picture.

They were alive, and they were okay.

(The picture became a meme within 24 hours).

The third and final picture was the one they make sure they send to the parents first. The administration of both NASA and the Garrison agreed that they deserved to be the first people to see it.

The four subjects of the photo were laughing, most likely at the surprise they just received in the second picture. Lance had his hand on Hunk’s shoulder, and was almost doubled over in laughter. Hunk was bent forward too, wiping a tear from his eye as he grinned. Katie was in the front, hand to her face, glasses askew, laughing into her palm. Keith was wincing, head turned away from the camera, but the corner of a smile just visible betrayed his expression. It was a simple and joyful image.

They were alive, they were okay, and they were happy.

The rest were, somewhat unfortunately, swept to the side by the mainstream media in favour of the first three. But the scientific community took them like they were manna from heaven.  

They were quite possibly the most breath-taking images of space anyone on Earth had ever seen.

Gorgeous, giant spiral galaxies, intertwining with each other in ways never seen before; Star systems made up of dozens of small suns, orbiting each other in complex, intricate networks; Asteroid belts of shimmering, crystalline rocks; Exoplanets three times the size of Jupiter, with rings around their rings. They were the purely theoretical, brought to life before their eyes.

There were more, even wilder sights. One picture depicted a planet whose surface was marked with deep holes and giant, outstretched ridges, and ground that looked almost… organic. Another was a blurry image of what looked like a giant creature, floating among the ruins of a disintegrated planet.

The most beautiful, many said, was a simpler one. It was a picture of a large spiral galaxy, surrounded by dozens of others but focused in on, practically glowing in the center of the image. It was their galaxy, the Milky Way. Someone had programmed _Revelation_ , with its new, mysteriously high-resolution camera, to train its sights back home. The question of who that someone was was barely a question at all.

General Iverson wasn’t a man who valued aesthetics; the most important things to him were real things, like skill, loyalty, and bravery. The images of space that _Revelation_ was returning were not things that would normally move him to any particular emotion. But when he first saw them, his pride had swelled a little.

It was _his_ kids out there - his kids that were seeing those sights, experiencing them first-hand. His cadets had become the explorers everyone on Earth wanted to be.

And if it was his kids out there, maybe he didn’t think it was all that bad at all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god i love space.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to @panwithoutaplan for putting up with me, as always. And Thank You for reading!!


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